chronic cough help — year and a half long struggle

Hi everyone! I posted here a little over a month ago explaining the situation with my cough. I am here again to give a recap, an update from last time, as well as seek more advice really from where to go from here because now I am honestly really at a loss to the point where my doctors were so sure this latest direction was the one that was going to heal my cough and it hasn’t at all.

I will recap from last month and tie my history and everything together.

I have had asthma from a young age. Though I used a nebulizer sometimes as a kid, my asthma was never really an issue honestly up until I had walking pneumonia at the end of 2019. Since then it has been off and on, but I have been able to manage it just fine with maintenance inhalers throughout the years in seasons when need be.

I have seasonal allergies which go hand in hand with my asthma a lot of times. Per my allergist, I was taking Nasacort in needed seasons to manage it, and sure enough that actually worked well.

When it comes to the cough, I just don’t know. This has lasted for about a year and half now. Every day, every night constantly. Just absolutely constantly. At times it also just feels like there’s something stuck in my throat that I need to clear, which is an incredibly annoying occurrence throughout the day. I never had a period of time where I coughed consistently like this for more than a couple weeks maybe. I have seen my primary care doctor, his PA, my two allergists, and my pulmonologist about this.

We first tackled this at the asthma level. I got chest x-rays to see if there was anything wrong with my lungs, and nothing came back on the scans. I have had a couple breathing tests—one with my pulmonologist about six months ago and one with one of my allergists a month ago. Both came back fine. I used trelegy for quite a while this year but it was doing absolutely nothing for my cough which told me it probably wasn’t my asthma that was causing this.

When it came to my sinuses, I had a CT scan and my pulmonologist said I have allergic sinusitis and a deviated septum. I was used to taking Nasacort, but one of my allergists recently put me on Xhance to go deeper. I have been on it for about a month, and it honestly hasn’t done anything for my cough but maybe given me daily nosebleeds (possibly? It could also be from the dry weather here in NY). In the span of my cough, I also was given antibiotics for my sinuses to rule out infections, but they didn’t do anything either.

The latest angle that my allergist and PA were certain was the cause is GERD. I was first put on the PPI omeprazole but I couldn’t tolerate it so now I have been on the H2 blocker Famotidine for three weeks now. It has also done nothing for my cough either, even with following all of the dietary recommendations.

I am at a loss. Tried tackling asthma, post nasal drip, GERD… the three most common causes for a chronic cough. I just don’t know what to do. This cough has really been put into the forefront of daily life. Since my last post I think it has honestly gotten even worst. It makes it challenging to breathe, to do things peacefully, to sleep well. Sometimes I just sit there coughing at night for hours until I can finally somewhat sleep. I have even bought a humidifier recently and humidity reader for my bedroom so I can monitor to the humidity for the winter months here. My life is literally just coughing 24/7 for a year and a half and the most frustrating thing about it is that I don’t know why, and because of that, I can’t properly treat it. I am at such a loss. I don’t want to keep doing this, and I also don’t want to have the people around me keep having to hear me cough a million times a day as I am sure that is super annoying. It makes me just want to cry some days. I would appreciate any tips or advice anybody has.

Thank you very much.

Current medication for cough: famotidine 20mg (morning/night), Xhance 93mcg (morning/night)